


Countdown to Armageddon

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt's seen plenty of dead bodies in beds and stretchers over the past week, though it's not really something he's gotten used to.  But this particular dead man is sprawled face-down on the floor, halfway between the elevator and the nurse's station.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Countdown to Armageddon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's hc_bingo community, for the prompt "pandemics and epidemics"
> 
> * * *

Day Four

"I don't get sick," John grouses.

"Okay, John," Matt says. 

John scowls in the direction of Matt's voice, too tired to open his eyes. Matt's humoring him, he's not too tired to realize _that_ , same way Matt does whenever he tries to help the kid out with his damn computer widgets, show him something he found out on the google. Matt thinks just because he doesn't know how to use the damn time-shift or which of the eight thousand buttons on the remote control he needs to push to find ESPN that he's a complete idiot. John knows shit. He knows lots of shit. 

He knows he ain't sick, for one thing. Like he said, he don't get sick. Flu went through the whole damn precinct back in '90, Al laid out for fucking weeks like he been hit by a Mack truck, but John? Not even a goddamn sniffle, thank you very much. 

He frowns again when Matt starts fussing with him, pushing at the sleeve of his robe, pinching at the bend of his elbow. He opens his mouth to tell the kid to fuck off and go play with his dolls or something, leave him alone to get some goddamn sleep, when he realizes that both of Matt's hands – his ice-cold hands – are clenched in his own left hand. 

John cracks open an eye in time to see the paramedic slide the needle home. 

"Shit," he mumbles.

 

Day Eleven

There is a dead man in the hallway of the hospital.

He's not on a gurney, though that would be bad enough. Matt's seen plenty of dead bodies in beds and stretchers over the past week, though it's not really something he's gotten used to. But this particular dead man is sprawled face-down on the floor, halfway between the elevator and the nurse's station.

There is a pool of drying vomit and other less easily identifiable bodily fluids spreading out from beneath the corpse. 

Matt looks from the body to the empty ward station, a dozen red buttons flashing on the call board. At the end of the hall he can hear a male voice calling out feebly, monotonously – 

_Nurse. Nurse. Nurse._

– and a clatter of footsteps in the stairwell to his right, someone running, someone getting the hell out of this place of the dead. He jumps and spins around quickly when the elevator dings opens behind him, waits for someone to emerge, anyone – 

_Nurse. Nurse. Nurse._

\-- and tries to quiet his racing heart when the elevator is empty, tries to still the frantic rush of blood pulsing madly through his veins. Panic won't do anyone any good, least of all John. 

If he'd had any qualms about pulling John out of the hospital, the dead body on the floor and the eerie stillness of the ward has put them to rest. 

Matt steps carefully over the body of the dead man, walks quietly down the hall. Closes his eyes and steeples his fingers against the cheap wood grain of John's door and says a breathless unvoiced prayer before pushing it open. 

The private room is silent, dark and gloomy with the curtains closed on the midday sun. He creeps to the end of John's bed, and for a moment his heart stops, truly stops, when he stares and stares at the thin sheet covering John's chest and can't see any movement. Then John breathes – a rattling, congested, horrible, painful sound – and Matt gasps out his own breath; moves quickly and decisively now that he _can_ move. He doesn't bother trying to bundle John onto a gurney; he simply unhooks the fluid bags from the IV pole and transfers them to John's pillow before removing the brakes on the wheels and rolling him out the door.

He is halfway to the elevator when the nurse wanders into the hall from one of the other rooms.

Matt freezes, a dozen excuses spiraling through his brain – he has to take John to another department for tests; John's being transferred to a different ward; he was told he can take John outside for some air – and he tightens his grip on the bedframe, knows that if she tries to stop him he'll fight tooth and nail to get John out of this hellhole. 

But the nurse only looks at him with dull, slack eyes before turning away with a choking, stomach-turning cough.

He moves past her at what is almost a run, jabs the button beside the elevator until the doors slide open. He maneuvers the hospital bed inside, keeps a wary eye on the woman until the doors close on that weary, colorless voice. 

_Nurse. Nurse. Nurse._

 

Day Twenty

It takes a long time, lying there with his back aching like of a son of a bitch, for John to realize that he's not in his own bed. He's not sure how long. 

He opens his eyes, tries to think past the fuzz in his brain and the dry, raw pain of his throat.

He remembers Matt leaning over him, with cold cloths that stank of vinegar. He remembers the icy drip of liquid in his veins and once, the pinch of elastic on his cheeks and the sharp sting of cool air in his throat. He remembers shivering, his skin dimpled and raw with the cold. And he remembers waking from a nightmare in which everyone he loved was turned to ash as he watched, and gasping for breath, and turning his head to see Matt sprawled on the sofa, his eyelids fluttering as he dealt with his own dream.

Now John stares at the overhead ceiling – the dimpled plaster and the crack left over from the leak in the upstairs bathroom that he never bothered to properly fix – and realizes that he's in his living room. That the bed is a hospital gurney, with its paper thin sheets and sturdy metal rails. 

He opens his mouth to yell for the kid… and in the next moment, he's asleep.

 

Day Twenty-Five

He's dreaming. 

Matt knows he's dreaming, because the television is on, some guys in black and red uniforms battling it out with some guys in green and gold. And it has to be a dream, because the power went out over a week ago, and the cable went out long before that – unless you count the Emergency Broadcast Signal still broadcasting on a couple of stations, with its warnings to stay away from overcrowded hospitals and pointless reminders to drink clear liquids and get plenty of rest. 

He also knows he's dreaming because John is there, lounging beside him on the sofa. John is holding a cold beer and wearing a T-shirt that stretches tightly over his chest. It's Matt's favourite T-shirt actually, the one that's so old and has gone through so many repeated wash cycles that it's faded from deep black to a dusty grey, the material soft and warm under his cheek. Matt tries to focus on the game, but football is only slightly more interesting than baseball and infinitely less interesting than basketball, so he lets his eyes drift closed. 

He sighs when John's hand comes up to smooth through his hair. It's a little rougher than usual, John fingers bluntly catching in the long strands, and Matt frowns. "Ow," he says.

"Sorry, kid," John rasps out.

Matt blinks awake in the space of a heartbeat, jerks up from where he's slumped against the hospital gurney. John's hand falls away from his head, and for a moment he's afraid to look up from John's open palm, afraid to find out that the caress was just part of his dream, afraid that he'll find John still sleeping or raving in delirium or…. worse. There is always worse.

He takes a breath before raising his eyes to John's face. 

"Hey, Matty," John says. His voice is the same low rasp that Matt thought he heard in his dream. His gaze sweeps critically over Matt's face, down to his rumpled and food-stained T-shirt and then up again, and he scowls. "You look like shit."

Matt sits up straighter, swipes his dirty hair out of his eyes. "Are you..?" He shakes his head, swallows rapidly. Best not to start with a stupid question. Instead he holds up a hand with fingers splayed. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Four."

"And now?"

John frowns. "Two," he croaks out before he raises his own hand and flips him the bird. "How about me?"

Matt grins, has to grip the guard rails on the bed to keep himself upright as the relief floods him. After endless days of fucking around with formulas, of turning John's kitchen into an impromptu lab, of supply runs and second-guessing and fevers and hallucinations – John's back. He's really back.

"No way," he hears the Warlock say from behind him. "We did it?"

Matt looks over his shoulder, finds Warlock pushing himself up from the sofa, blinking the sleep rapidly from his eyes. 

"We did it!" he crows.

"Dude!" Warlock steps up quickly, gives him a high-five before nodding at John. "Warrell 22! Fucking right."

"Warrell 22," Matt confirms. He can't stop grinning. So many different formulations, so many sleepless nights. But they did it.

"We're geniuses," Warlock says. "You know that, right? I mean not just in the world of computer science, which was already a given. We are actual, motherfuckin' geniu—"

"What the hell is Butterball doing here?" John rasps. "For that matter, what the hell am I doing here? I was in the hospital. I _remember_ going to the hospital."

Matt turns back to John, some of the elation fading away. They saved him – they actually saved him – but John is still weak. And the worst part – explaining what's been happening – might still be to come. "You've been… out of it," he hedges. "You need to rest." He waves off John's protest and quickly raises a glass to his lips, holds it and does his best to ignore the way John's hand is shaking while John sips. The water is tepid, but it seems to do the trick. John relaxes back onto the pillow, closes his eyes. 

He knows it's a pipe dream to think that John will just rest up and let the explanations come tomorrow or the next day. He also knows that John has reserves of strength that sometimes – okay, most of the time – make Superman look like a slacker. So it's no surprise when John opens his eyes – clearer now, that piercing sea-green that is almost impossible to resist – and sits up straighter on the bed.

"Talk to me, kid," John says.

"Look. Okay," Matt starts. "The thing is. You were sick, John. You were really sick. And you were in the hospital, even though you really didn't want to go, and at first I didn't want to make you, but then you started coughing and you wouldn’t stop, so I called them. Okay? So you were in the hospital, that part is right, but then I sort of… discharged you. And then things got kind of crazy." Matt shakes his head. "No, they were crazy before that. But—"

"Goddamnit Matt," John says, "just tell me what's going on!"

Matt looks helplessly to the Warlock, who shrugs and steps forward. "Basically, dude? It's the end of the world."

"It was the flu," Matt says quickly when John just scowls. "At first they thought it was swine, then avian, then something brand new. And they couldn't get a handle on it because it kept mutating, so as soon as they started one course of treatment it changed, and the patients kept getting worse and worse…"

"And?"

"And died. They died, John. The hospitals couldn't keep up, the pharmaceutical companies couldn't keep up, and even if they could the mutations were making anything they did ineffective after the first day. And it spread so quickly, the cases piling up, the doctors getting sick." Matt spreads his hands wide. "I had to get you out of there. So I took you home."

"So lemme get his straight. You're saying you and Pork Roast here, you cured me?"

"There's a lot of information online if you know where to look. We went out and foraged at the medical libraries, too." Matt glances quickly at the Warlock. "And we only had you to focus on." 

Warlock looks at the worn carpet, won't return his gaze. With the state of things now, they both know that he'll likely never get back to Baltimore. Never get to move his mother from the bed she died in, give her the proper burial that she deserved. Matt does his best not to feel guilty about that, that and pulling the Warlock away from everything and everyone he knew to drive to New York and help him fight this thing that had its claws in John McClane.

Matt clears his throat, looks back to John. "Plus Susannah, from my guild? She's a chemist, so. She was already working on some formulas so she helped us with what to get, and then we basically just… mixed and matched. Then the Warlock started to get sick but we caught it quick, dosed him up with one of our batches and crossed our fingers. And then we just kept trying different things, going back to the books. We… we lost Susannah six days ago."

"Dead?"

Matt shakes his head. "She was sick, working on her own formulations, checking in with us when we tried something new. But she had no one to help her, and she was getting weaker. She's in Oregon. We … she just stopped answering her cell. We don't know."

"Jesus," John says. He leans back on the pillow and swipes a hand over his stubble, before his eyes suddenly fly open. "Lucy?"

"She was driving to California," Matt says. "Holly… Holly was sick, and she didn't have anyone with her. Lucy knew you had me, so… she had to go, John." 

"You said this thing spreads rapidly," John says.

"We think it must be airborne," Warlock says, "but nobody was ever able to—"

"You said _everyone_ got sick," John interrupts.

"She was fine," Matt says quickly. It's not a complete lie. Lucy wasn't showing any of the signs – the dry throat, the hacking cough, the fever – when she got into her little Volvo and started the drive to the coast. 

He wants to believe she made it. 

But even though he reconfigured her cell to connect through the satcoms before she left, she hasn't answered her phone in four days.

 

Day Twenty-Seven

John stands on the front porch, staring at the devastation of his street.

There is a car crashed into the telephone pole in front of the Henderson's place, the hood a massive ruin, the driver's door gaping open. The Weinstein's place is a charred wreck, collapsed in upon itself. Matt says that by the time he realized it was ablaze the entire building was already engulfed; says that if the wind had been blowing their way the entire block would have gone up. John just hopes Harve and Molly weren't home. 

He sees three dead bodies between his house and the corner.

"At the end, people start raving. Hallucinating," Matt says from beside him, from where he's hovering at his elbow. Damn kid still thinks he's going to keel over unless somebody's holding his hand. "With no one to help them or make them stay put, I guess they just got up and started wandering."

John wonders how many times he tried to get up and walk the streets, how much raving he did when he was out of it. He hasn't missed the haunted look in Matt's eyes. 

John swipes a hand over his chin, moves to sit on the step. He lets Matt sit next to him without complaint. Maybe his legs are still a little unsteady. 

Maybe that has very little to do with the lingering effects of the super-flu and more to do with the fact that this desolation isn't limited to his neighbourhood. Not to his city or his country. It's overtaken the goddamn world.

John hangs his head, and when Matt's hand wraps around his, he grabs it and holds on tight. Presses his lips together and takes a deep breath through his nose and makes sure he's going to sound normal, rational, not goddamn shit-scared, before he side-glances the kid. "There'll be other survivors," he says.

Matt blinks those long lashes. "Sure," he says slowly. "Some people will have natural immunity, like me. Some people will get through it, like you and the Warlock. Besides, no disease has a one hundred percent fatality rate. There's been studies done, I have them highlighted in the medical journal—"

John puts a hand on Matt's knee to prevent him from rising. "There'll be other survivors," he says firmly. He squeezes Matt's knee gently before taking another look around and then hauling himself to his feet, pulling the kid up after him, and allows himself a moment to just enjoy the press of Matt's body against his, the way his arm fits perfectly around Matt's waist.

Matt seems to realize that he's getting his strength back, because the kid rests against him without complaint. Then he takes a breath, looks up into John's eyes. "Okay," Matt says. "Survivors. But how do we find them?"

Jack is stationed in Afghanistan, out of reach. But somewhere out there in the land of palm trees and sunny skies, his baby girl needs him. 

"First," John says, "we head to California."


End file.
